Eugene Lim–“Returning to the Problem” [The 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar #22] (2017)

What is The Tiny Chef? I just heard about him a few weeks before getting this album. According to his site:

The Tiny Chef has been cooking up amazing plant-based food and has wanted his own cooking show for the better part of the 90’s and 2000’s. He’s excited to work with Rachel, Ozi, Adam and the rest of the internet to spread his recipes and cooking style. He also firmly believes that children should learn how to cook and is hopeful that kids watch his cooking program. In his free time The Chef enjoys playing endless games of Uno and he loves to play his tiny banjo.

Each video shows The Tiny Chef making something and singing to himself in an adorable mumble (he has a good voice, it must be said). And thus, they released The Mish Mesh Album with all of the proceeds going to adopt “SWEET PEA” the Scottish Highland cow at The Farm Sanctuary.

I was happy to contribute my $5 and was happy to learn after the fact that:

We have definitely covered the $38 it costs to adopt and sponsor sweet pea.

I also love the modest goal that they set.

So the album consists of The Tiny Chef singing these Christmas songs in his own humming style:

The rest of the songs are a minute or two and are sweet and adorable. Sometime I wish he sang more mumbles and fewer almost lyrics, but that’s the Chef’s way. It’s a delightful addition to the holiday listening and I hope it’s available again next year.

[READ: December 22, 2018] “Returning to the Problem”

Once again, I have ordered The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my third time reading the Calendar (thanks S.). I never knew about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh). Here’s what they say this year

Fourth time’s the charm.

After a restful spring, rowdy summer, and pretty reasonable fall, we are officially back at it again with another deluxe box set of 24 individually bound short stories to get you into the yuletide spirit.

The fourth annual Short Story Advent Calendar might be our most ambitious yet, with a range of stories hailing from eight different countries and three different originating languages (don’t worry, we got the English versions). This year’s edition features a special diecut lid and textured case. We also set a new personal best for material that has never before appeared in print.

Like last year I’m pairing each story with a holiday disc from our personal collection.

Lim describes this story as “A fiction-poetry-essay-memoir frankenstory sparked to being by torture rendition sites and a tossed-off comment by Tom McCarthy on the destruction of the Death Star.”

This story started out in a weird way–as if it was a poem with gaps between lines and right justification. You instantly want to read it differently.

The story (which is not all in verse) is also in several numbered parts. The crux seems to be that he wants to write about the Immigration Act of 1965, which a footnote says is thought to have been more symbolic than consequential–“an antidote to the country’s embarrassment during the Cold War of not being the beacon of democracy it professed to be.”

The story has a refrain that is as powerful as it is awful:

a sheath of ice
over the muscles

a new dark age when
the racists win

Part 2 has the narrator locked up and being tortured–whether metaphorical or not is hard to know. They claimed certain acts were against their laws but not always.

a sheath of ice runs over the muscles
of the heart

when the racists
win again

Part three has the narrator talking to his parents about the Immigration Act of 1965, which allowed masses of people from Asia in for the first time. But they didn’t realize it. His parents came to America because of this but they both say that if the government knew what would happen next they’d never have signed it. No way.

Part 4 has the narrator talking to a friend about all kinds of things but also about certain tough subjects–the death (or not) of an uncle–they could never confirm with their parents whether the uncle was dead. They were also avoiding the issue of a racist president.

Then the friend told him that when his father first came over he discouraged his brother from coming. He must have been very disheartened.

Section 5 is about Kafka versus the Death Star. Author Tom McCarthy says that thinking you could destroy the Death Star in a perfect act of rebellion is pure fantasy.